


[Meta for 3.24] What did that Cath and her ex [Billy Harrington] scene mean?

by wanderlustlover



Series: Hawaii Five-0 Season Three Meta [6]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Meta, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back-dated May 21st, 2013 on Tumblr <a href="http://wanderlustlover.tumblr.com/post/51026026497/oh-my-darling-join-the-club-this-scene-is-wrong">here</a>. Especially so I can link to it during S4 (since everyone correctly guessed the love triangle angle we're about to get).</p>
            </blockquote>





	[Meta for 3.24] What did that Cath and her ex [Billy Harrington] scene mean?

**Author's Note:**

>  

Oh, my darling, join the club. This scene is wrong and confusing and baffling on so many levels (having no place in the episode, lacking both lead-up and any conclusion to it). Let’s do some flashback-flash forward break down first.

**Billy & Cath**

**Present Day** \- Intro boy we’ve never met, never even heard of, who apparently works on Pearl (where we assume Cath works) with her! Whom she potentially never saw before and maybe even only professionally, if ever since her break-up, because she is entirely unaware he was on Hawaii or that he’s leaving The Navy. Which means they are not very good friends and not very close, since she’s not anywhere near in the know about what is happening in his life right now.

 **Past Days** \- Suddenly we bring in the mention that they were seeing each other five years ago in Amsterdam, that she’d left Steve because “what we had was real.” (Something we’ve never once heard Steve or Cath say about their relationship.) 

( **See Also As Important Here** : This breaking up with Steve for “something real” is a two years before Freddie told Steve Cath was the real deal and Steve didn’t agree or react like a man anywhere near in love. [Ep. 3.20] 

**See Also Just as Important Here** : Freddie’s thing is right at the beginning of the series when we catch them the first time at episode 4 admitted they’ve never made it to dinner, because of sex and have never had a social/non-favor phone call. Ever. It’s a canon quote, direct from Cath’s mouth. Not exposition. so two years into their relationship they are not social and are only talking for favors, paid for by sex.)

 **Present Day** \- We get the allusion that Billy is interested in catching up with his five year ex or at least circumstances where they can talk more than on a sidewalk, both walking between jobs, but Cath both seems surprised and off put by this. Like somehow maybe it’s a thing, or not a thing? But who knows, because we’ve never heard anything about Billy or Cath at Pearl this season ever. We, also, get the allusion that Billy either knows Steve or knows a lot of Steve. Because he’s not surprised that she’s throwing out the wobbly line of seeing someone, who is obviously going to be Steve, but still isn’t called her boyfriend. Five. Years. Later. 

Can we examine just this point? 

**Billy is not surprised either that Cath is back with McGarrett, who wasn’t “the real thing,” or turning down people for him, or that there is no single use of the word boyfriend or girlfriend or even the word ‘serious.’ Even. At. Five/Six. Years. Later.** (Which is not surprising given Steve’s eternal lack of inclination both in the past with Freddie and in the present, with Cath, herself, for this to be anything real/or containing any emotional growth.

But, yes, Billy I’d give a little depricating laugh, too, if the girl I liked/loved/moved on from four or five years ago, but haven’t given any inclination toward’s having asked out in this clip, was still and once again seeing that same guy, again, from before me, but who hadn’t made it serious with her during those five years. Yeah. I’m right there with you. I’d be sympathetically pitying/concerned for any friend with that kind of fixation on guy not intending to step up ever, or even giving signs of it.

Once, again, we only see The Love Interest making it known she’s taken, what she wants, while nothing has been put out there from The Hero all season, not toward anyone. [Not that I can blame him given his longest friend and girlfriend lied to him guilt free and only came clean at the last moment when it might further endanger his mother not to tell him [3.18])

It’s like this universally public, acknowledgement of a chronic problem with no public spoken acknowledgement or growth or change. And it rubbed me so wrong, and made me want to grab Cath, the character, from Lenkov’s hands all over, again.

On top of this we add the fact Cath gets awkward about an invitation for to a dinner to “talk about the future of his life.” Catherine automatically skewing his words to mean date and or other things that make her need to defend her still-not-to-an-actual-relationship-word-in-this-sentence-six-years-later status (even though we’ve only seen her and Steve on a date once in all of canon [2.17], wherein she spent it talking about getting out of her dress and heels as soon as possible). 

Maybe as blueofthebay put it, Cath leaps to the “date/sex” assumption from a “dinner” reference because Steve and she never made it to “dinner” for the first Four years of their relationship (two years pre-series and Season One/Season Two). So that then in her own personal lexicon she was basically just being asked for a update/goodbye send off that didn’t involve food at all. 

I find it strange she couldn’t have a respectable goodbye/Congrats on finishing your all Tours dinner, with a five-years-age ex, after tossing out her heavy handed “I’m Taken” sign. Especially when the man is literally getting out of the service and did not even come on to her in that reference. I mean, seriously, it’s been five years. I don’t think any guy would be surprised at the no or take offense at the offer for a friends-only meal. Not after five years apart.

(And if we’re supposed to see this as his implication of that invitation, that he expects Cath to respond to that, that that is Cath’s norm — because it’s definitely was her normal state of affairs with Steve for Four Years — what are we really supposed to be drawing as the conclusions to her character of the last four/five years. If she’s been/had been doing this with more people. If she’s been pining and pinning her hopes on Steve the whole time, while it wasn’t “real,” and she can even acknowledge what was with Billy from what wasn’t with Steve before Billy. 

The more I dig around in the possibilities of this scene, the less I like what this show does to female characters in the name of Them Being Strong or Awesome.) 

—- —- —- —- —- —- —- —-

So back to your immediate question, and the results therein?

I don’t know why this scene is here. I hate all the options that have been presented so far by everyone on twitter and tumblr, as much as I an agree how easily it would be the spring board from there. The following theories are the ones I’ve seen most: 

1\. _It happened to have Cath say she’s “seeing someone,” thus trying to legitimize this relationship again._ Except once, again, only from her/The Love Interest, and never actually in the context of the two people in the relationship together talking to each other. And right up against the context of implying Steve’s ‘not the real thing,’ at the same time.

(Also, still without addressing or working through her massive faux pau of lying to Steve, guilt free for eight episodes, when she’s his oldest friend and would know about all of his trust issues.)

2\. _To establish that Cath is desirable (in a fashion that didn’t have to do with her rotating bathing suit wardrobe) to other men_ (even if five years have passed by and her notice of that person/Billy emulates down to a tee Steve’s notice of Cath, herself, in their relationship [see 3.16, wherein pre-Cath’s lie-reveal even, Steve is reading a book not paying attention to her talking to him until she offers sex/”the foxhole fantasy”]). 

3\. To springboard McRollins tensions or a love triangle in Season Four. Which I think it the one I roll my eyes at and toss out of my head as soon as it walks in. 

4\. _The Lenkov wants me to believe that sex with Steve is the most epic thing ever._ No, really. The most epic thing to ever epic an epic epically. The kind of epic worth handing out national intelligence to the guy who never calls you except for a favor, never takes you to dinner in favor of sexing you, and whom you hung on pining for over four years of that treatment, only seeing him twice a year of each (based on Season 1 and Season 2), who you knew wasn’t “the real deal,” whom you left and came back to, and let treat you like this for four years. The guy who never even told you how his “like a brother”-best friend died, until three years later. 

I’m pretty sure self respect went out the door of this situation with national intelligence. But who needs self-respect when you have a gorgeous bikini-wearing, Navy BAMF girl (who is the equal of a SEAL [3.20]), who will always be waiting for you, defending your relationship to other people, and happily, hopefully waiting for you, ready to put out at a moments notice, while having tea socials and lies with your mom, even when you don’t toss her scraps or treat her respectfully, until you need her.

I have no idea what this scene was for, but once again it made Steve, Cath and the Steve-Cath “Thing” look so much worse for the wear (and me angry/insulted on the behalf of all three). Especially since they still aren’t willing to label it and there’s no sign of an actual relationship going on (changing, growing, etc). And they’ve pointed out, _again_ , that it’s been that way for over half a decade. 

Mostly I feel like this minute or two was a travesty of confusion that didn’t belong. And like it seriously never decided what it was really supposed to be about or there for.


End file.
